New APPS: Art, Politics, Philosophy, Science

Evolutionary Biology at the top of the Intellectual Division of Labor

"(A proximate mechanism is an immediate direct cause, while an ultimate explanation is the last in the long chain of factors leading up to that immediate cause. For example, the proximate cause of a marriage breakup may be a husband's discovery of his wife's extramarital affairs, but the ultimate explanation may be the husband's chronic insensitivity and the couple's basic incompatibility that drove the wife to affairs.) Physiologists and molecular biologists regularly fall into the trap of overlooking this distinction, which is fundamental to biology, history and human behavior. Physiology and molecular biology can do no more than identify proximate mechanisms; only evolutionary biology can provide ultimate causal explanations."--Jared Diamond Why is Sex Fun?, 1997.

Let's grant Diamond the coherence of the distinction between proximate mechanisms and ultimate explanations. Let's also grant it him in the way he has articulated it, despite, perhaps, a lingering sense that being "last in the long chain of factors" does not quite grasp the fundamentality of an ultimate explanation. I was struck by (i) Diamond's insistence (without evidence) that his fellow scientists "regularly" overlook the distinction, and by (ii) his further claim that "only" evolutionary biology can get at ultimate causal explanations. Diamond has a nice sense of the intellectual hierarchy within the intellectual division of labor. (If you plug in "metaphysics" for evolutionary biology and "mechanics" for molecular biology, you get a standard 18th century picture embraced by Berkeley and Leibniz, I think.)

Here I am not interested in the hankering after even more fundamental than fundamental explanations (you know, God, the Principle of Sufficient Reason, Final Causes, etc.). Rather, this morning I was gripped by this thought: why think that in the real world there is anything over and above the proximate causes and mechanism? Why isn't the whole idea of "ultimate" explanations just our chasing after patterns? Now, what would persuade me otherwise is if the evidence for the ultimate causes can (a) systematically avoid relying on the evidence for the the proximate causes and (b) be also more robust, higher quality, etc. But given that it is so hard to do controlled experiments in the service of (b), (b) doesn't seem to be so easy to achieve. I am too ignorant about the details to have any strong opinion on (a). Anyway, I bet there are standard answers to my gripped questions.

Can philosophy of religion be an acceptable form of proselytism/apologetics?

This is X-posted from Prosblogion. Let me be clear from the outset: the majority of work in analytic philosophy of religion (PoR) does not aim to proselytize, but is concerned with fairly technical topics, such as the possibility of creaturely free will in heaven, the compatibility of specific divine attributes, or the evidential problem of evil. But some portion of PoR is clearly aimed at convincing the reader that religious belief (usually, Christianity, given the demographics of academic philosophy) is reasonable. To this end, philosophers construct sophisticated arguments, for instance, to show that religious belief does not require evidence, that religious faith is also, or even primarily, a matter of practical rationality, that the evidence is overwhelmingly in favor of theism, etc. Plantinga and Swinburne are good examples.

Such philosophy of religion can be plausibly regarded as a form of proselytism--I'm using a wider term than the usual apologetics, as apologetics is the more narrow notion of systematically defending a particular religious position. But I'm not entirely happy with the term proselytism either, since I also think that some of this PoR is aimed at those people who have religious faith, but who are wavering, for instance, because others tell them their faith is not rational. So I'll settle for proselytism cum apologetics as a not entirely satisfactory term for this type of PoR. Is it acceptable for philosophers of religion to engage in proselytism/apologetics?

Carolyn's NRC-PGR data

I find Carolyn's post on the 2006 NRC data quite fascinating. (Remember to click on her diagrams to bring up a bigger version.)

I take it that the S-ranking reflects actual performance (however that might be measured) with regard to factors that are explicitly valued. And the R-ranking reflects not exactly reputation, but actual performance in factors that are found to influence reputation. So to some extent, R is appearance (actually predicted appearance: high performance in what makes for reputation) and S is reality. Of course, the measurements and analysis may be rubbish, so one has to take the whole thing with a grain of salt.

Still and all: there are some strange results . . .

Graduate Schools: Combining NRC and Gourmet Data

NRC data on Philosophy graduate schools has been criticized, but in this thoughtful guest post, Carolyn Dicey Jennings suggests a useful way to combine them with reputational surveys such as the Gourmet Report. She writes:

Finding the right graduate school can be tricky. The reputational value of the faculty is important, but so is the support one is likely to receive as a graduate student, the ultimate prospects for getting a job, and other factors that are not necessarily tied to faculty reputation. When I was looking at graduate schools, I went to the Gourmet Specialty Rankings and looked at every department mentioned under the Philosophy of Physics specialty. For each department listed, I downloaded papers by those faculty members who specialized in the philosophy of physics and sent emails to faculty I was interested in working with. I found a great fit in Boston University. Unfortunately, after all that research, I decided to change specialties a couple of years into my degree. Luckily, I was in a supportive department with some true pluralists, such as my advisor, Dan Dahlstrom. But I can imagine having been much worse off if I wasn't in a department with good student support. And so it is important for everyone, I think, regardless of specialty and commitment, to know something about these other factors. This is where the National Research Council comes in.

Brazilian music on Fridays: Madredeus

Continuing the tradition of occasionally ‘cheating’ a bit and featuring non-Brazilian music here at BMoF, this week I’m posting a couple of songs by the Portuguese band Madredeus. They are very well known in the world music circuit, among other things as a consequence of their prominent role in Wim Wenders’ Lisbon Story (1994). Their music is heavily inspired by traditional Portuguese music (including but not restricted to Fado), in particular the traditional melancholic themes of Portuguese music: sailing, traveling, longing, nostalgia (saudade!). The voice of Madredeus, the wonderful singer Teresa Salgueiro, left the band in 2007, and now pursues a solo career.

Maybe environmental issues really do loom large

After I said that environmental issues loomed large in the U.S. Presidential campaign, we were treated to almost complete silence on the topic; notably, global climate change (GCC) was not mentioned in any of the four debates.  Now, finally, with the tragedy wrought by Sandy, we are hearing about GCC and how the different candidates might handle it. 

Even Mayor Bloomberg has gotten into the act, endorsing Obama over Romney in part because he now believes that "Mr. Obama was the better candidate to tackle the global climate change that he believes might have contributed to the violent storm, which took the lives of at least 38 New Yorkers and caused billions of dollars in damage."

Is this the point at which Americans will finally start taking GCC seriously and do something about it? 

A Question about the Presidential Election

Much has been made of Obama's disastrous performance in the first Presidential debate. And that performance was truly disastrous, to the point of irresponsibility. Well deservedly, his poll ratings declined for several days after that debate.

Still, I wonder how much the Obama poll decline should be pinned on the debate alone. After all, the Democratic campaign did make a conscious decision to spend early—to define Romney's public image before Romney could do so himself. It could be argued that that strategy was flawed. Romney was always going to have a chance to define himself, and Obama's doziness simply gave him an additional opportunity. And it was always going to be the case that when Republican spending kicked in, the Obama ratings would slip. Is that what happened? Not the debate but the ebb and flow of the campaign?